


breathe it in

by Kayndred



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Drama, Fluff, Grappling with Emotional Maturity, M/M, Pining, up to season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-23 17:47:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15611640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kayndred/pseuds/Kayndred
Summary: On the long journey home, there's not a whole lot of room to run from what was said. While Keith tries to give Shiro space, he fights with both his own heart and the difference two years makes.But maybe a little breathing room is all they need.





	breathe it in

**Author's Note:**

> A gift for Enzetto as part of our server flash exchange! I was asked for fluff, angst, and/or drama, and I think I touched on all three. I hope you like it, it was an absolute joy to write!

It probably shouldn’t be as surprising as it is, after everything -- the clone revelation, the battle, the _I died, Keith_ moments that have turned their reunion into something raw and emotionally unwieldy. Hell, Pidge and Allura think that it’s going to take time for Shiro to get back to using a physical body again, let alone dealing with all the chaos of the last few, what, days?

Basically, Keith shouldn’t be surprised, but he still kind of is. It’s hard to remember that it hasn’t been two years for everyone, after all.

It starts with little things, sort of inconsequential but not really, in a space as tight as theirs. Shiro sleeps a lot in the beginning, which they think is because he’s been ~~dead~~ gone for so long. It takes twice as long as it should for him to realize that not only is Shiro sleeping _a lot_ , he’s sort of… only awake when Krolia is awake.

Which is, conveniently, when Keith has asked Black to follow the lions so that they can keep a steady travel pace while he _doesn’t_ collapse from exhaustion, thanks. He’s not suspicious, at least not at first -- he’s hurt, a little, that Shiro apparently doesn't want to be around him while he’s piloting. And it’s not like they don’t catch each other _sometimes_ , in the scant fifteen minutes to a half hour where he’s waking up and Keith is getting ready to sleep.

The worst part is that most of those moments are so _normal_. Like nothing’s changed. Shiro looks at him like he’s safer because Keith is there, and his smiles are so warm and bright Keith can’t bring himself to ask _‘are you avoiding me?’_. They don’t talk about anything of consequence, of course, both intimately aware of how precious sleep is, how precarious their isolation in space. It’s a blessing that no one’s found them yet, and the loose schedule that they have is to be cherished.

So the feeling of being caught between his own paranoia and the possibility that Shiro _is_ avoiding him persists, through every shift change, through every almost-meal they have together.

Sometimes Shiro leans into him, just a little with his right side, like he’s protecting the stump of his arm against Keith’s body.

Other times, he sits across from Keith and can’t meet his eyes completely, and Keith thinks _I love you, don’t leave, please don’t leave._

\--

And then:

“Shiro, you should come visit me! See the muffins!”

Keith, Shiro and Krolia exchange looks.

“The muffins?” Pidge isn’t exactly known for her cooking, and Shiro’s audible doubt is well placed.

“Yeah!” Pidge’s face lights up a corner of Black’s hud, a fuzzy purple… _thing_ pressed against her face. “The muffins! I found them, when we were all separated after the wormhole debacle. I don’t think you’ve actually, ya’know, _met_ them.”

_You without Haggar in your head_ , she means, and Keith’s fingers twitch on the controls but he doesn’t react otherwise, looking up at Shiro curiously. He’s been getting ready to engage the autopilot so that Krolia can take the helm and he can sleep, and Shiro had woken up only moments before. He’d been looking forward to sitting against Comet, talking about the sort of silly inconsequential things that made up his conversations with Shiro now.

But…

“That sounds… fun. Sure,” Shiro says, looking skeptical but game anyway, and Pidge yells in delight and -- Keith’s happy, sure, they need laughter right now, but as they spend the next half hour looking for an asteroid big enough to land on he can’t help the twisting feeling in his gut.

Shiro braces on Comet while he walks down the ramp out of Black and across the mostly even asteroid. The space-dog looks up at him with every other step, moving carefully across the barren landscape between the two lions. Keith walks to his right and slightly behind him, just in case. He can feel Krolia’s eyes boring into his head from where she’s waiting at the ramp’s end, but won’t look back at her.

Pidge hugs them both explosively, patting Comet with enthusiasm before whipping out one of her ‘muffins’ from somewhere and explaining to Shiro how she’s tried to catalog what they eat and how they eat it and what exactly lets them breathe in limited atmosphere -- and they’re walking away, her excited talking spiking over the comms. Shiro looks back at him and smiles like ‘what can you do’, but Keith can’t shake the feeling that he looks… relieved.

\--

Keith doesn’t really know how to deal with Krolia, to be frank. Two years and change isn’t really enough time to establish someone as a ‘mom’ in his mind, but maybe he’s just stubborn. She’s special to him, and he knows her as well as he can having spent two years sharing memories with her, but there’s still a _distance_ between them, one that Keith thinks is more related to him being an adult when she came back into his life, rather than anything they can actually address.

That gap doesn’t stop her from having some kind of impeccable _mom_ sense.

“Shiro will be fine,” she says from his right, standing behind the command chair while they take off from the asteroid.

“Of course he will. Pidge is an excellent pilot.”

“Then why do you worry?”

“I - ” but he does worry. He’s worrying right now about the way Shiro has been acting, the way it had almost looked like he was escaping when he’d turned back to Pidge, shoulders so loose Keith couldn’t believe he’d missed how much tension was in them until that moment.

He’s worrying that Shiro remembers, remembers everything, and that the _I love you_ haunts him as much as it haunts Keith. The idea that Shiro is waiting for the right moment to let Keith down, or, worse, _that he’s trying to signal his disinterest now_ , makes his chest hurt.

“It’s not his safety I’m worried about,” he says instead, and ignores her pointed _hmm_. Eventually she leaves his side to go sit with Comet and their provisions, sending out coded signals through the delicate relay they rigged together, hoping to contact the Blade.

Keith hopes _something_ pops up, although the Blade would be preferable. Anything is better than the silence and the nagging feeling that something is slipping through his fingers.

\--

Shiro stays with Pidge for three weeks, during which Keith and Krolia push his healing pod over to the Green lion so that he can spend time in healing stasis when he isn’t doing whatever it is they do in Green. Keith doesn’t think about it that often, or at all, _really,_ it’s just a long time. Especially when he’s been away for _two years_.

… but it _hasn’t_ been two years for everyone, has it.

He hears Shiro over Pidge’s comm. about as often as he talked to Shiro before he left, but it’s -- he’s still -- the pain doesn’t go away. Something in him is raw an aching, like a muscle being used after years of neglect, and the lightness in Shiro’s voice doesn’t make it any better.

He should be _happy_ Shiro is back, free, and adjusting as well as he is to everything. He should be happy that Shiro can still laugh at Hunk and Lance’s banter, at Coran’s just-this-side-of-left-field alien commentary. He can hear the awe in Shiro’s voice when they pass a nebula so vibrant that their visors have to tint almost to black to let them see it.

He should be happy, but worry eats at him. It taints his joy at Shiro’s laughter and turns the warmth in his chest at Shiro’s gasp of surprise into a mass of spikes. He dodges Krolia’s comments about the strangeness that’s risen in him, and curls into Comet’s side when he has to sleep.

If he tries, he can pretend the fur is hair, and that the body next to his has two legs instead of four.

He doesn’t try.

\--

And then:

“You should come visit me next, man!”

The pit in Keith’s stomach gets a little bit bigger. Lance is chiming in right after, saying ‘ _ohh me next dude, me next!_ ’ and it’s been too many hours since Keith has seen Shiro in person, heard his voice without the static of the comms between them.

“ _Alright!_ ” Shiro says, and his excitement reinforces the layer of resignation that has been growing around his heart the past few days. The past week.

Keith knows it’s selfish, knows he shouldn’t be as covetous of Shiro as he is. Knows that the sliver of himself that is souring with every day his heart remains unanswered is growing.

_Get your shit together, Keith_. He tells himself. _You made him a promise, you’re going to keep it. This isn’t even secondary._

The outward anger has faded to a low rush in his chest, doubling and tripling back on itself. The fault lies in himself, after all. Shiro never asked for his appreciation and enjoyment of their friendship to turn into something _else_. His desire to give himself space away from Keith is obvious, and if Keith wants to save their friendship, the easiest route will be to draw back as well. It’ll be the best way to signal to Shiro that he understands without _talking_ about it, since they don’t seem to do much of that now.

“Keith?”

He jerks, looks back at Krolia and knows that he’s too open, that the flood of resignation that’s trying to drown the thing in his chest is too present in his eyes. He watches the concern overtake the curiosity on her face, the way she sags at the edges. She takes a half step forward but hesitates, caught with the chair in her way.

“Oh, Keith.”

Her hand against his cheek is warm and rough, reminiscent of his father’s enough to tease old aches, but new, and he leans into her palm. It’s strange to have someone touch him like this.

\--

So:

The worst part of it all is that it _isn’t_ hard. That packing his emotions away is almost as easy as piloting, except for all the ways it isn’t. Shiro spending longer and longer time with the other paladins gives him space to breathe, to compartmentalize. Shiro is still the most important person in his life, but it’s childish and ridiculous to think that everything will work out the way he wants.

_We had two years of training in patience. Act like it._

So he shoves it away, stops brooding about the negatives of Shiro being awake up not at his side. Grasps at the joy in his laughter and his face over their comms and thinks _this is worth it. This is -_ he _is - more important than anything else._ And it’s complicated, because that joy feeds his feelings, feelings he lashes down every day, with every smile and every comment.

But Shiro is _alive_ , and happy, and that’s always been more than enough.

\--

“Keith, you should talk to him about it.”

“This is best, for both of us.”

\--

So it goes:

For blessed long, quiet, boring weeks, where Keith tames the side of him that wants to keep Shiro close and protected, where he makes joking excuses about having to clean black because Comet is shedding, how there’s not enough space unless Shiro always wants to play at sleeping beauty, how it’s better that Shiro get to see inside the other lions when all he’s really known is Black.

No one calls him on it, on how Shiro hasn’t returned to Keith since the beginning, although he’s sure even Lance has picked up on some kind of dissonance. Pidge is the one he’s most worried about, but although her side eyeing looks have grown more and more pointed, she hasn’t said anything.

\--

The first populated planet they reach is one in a string of trading outposts along a galactic belt, the perfect roadmap between civilization and the absolute silence of space. They strip out of their paladin gear and disguise themselves, the team making jokes about ‘rolling for initiative’ that Keith doesn’t understand but doesn’t want to pry in to.

With the lions stashed as far as they can be while still being accessible in case of an emergency, they descend on an outpost town with barely restrained enthusiasm, excitement up and guard moderately relaxed.

This is, of course, when Pidge decides to pounce.

Keith is leaning against a pillar while Allura, Coran and Hunk make rapid fire negotiations over food. Lance and Shiro are off to the right, exclaiming over something shiny that Krolia is engaged in what looks to be a fierce barter for. They left Comet with the lions, for safety’s sake, which still isn’t an excuse as to why Pidge gets the drop on him when she appears at his elbow with a, “So what’s up with you and Shiro?”

He’s reaching for his blade half way through her sentence, only freezing when ‘you and Shiro’ finally registers. His eyes dart back to the stall that his mother, his best friend, and Lance are occupying, but it doesn’t look like Pidge’s words carried and there’s probably too much noise anyway.

The silence draws between them as he settles, arms crossed over his chest and eyes on their exits. “How do you mean.”

“Don’t play dumb, you’re not pretty enough for that.” She deadpans, giving him a look over her single-eye visor. She looks like a robot. Her chin jerks in Shiro’s direction, and Keith lets his eyes follow, knowing it’s better than resisting.

“Shiro hasn’t been back to Black in almost two months, and for like, the first three weeks you were super pissy about it, and then you got, like, _massive sad_ , and now you’re just, what? Cool with it?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Pidge scoffs and mutters something that sounds like, _these boys will kill me oh my goooood_.

“Uh, because you’ve got world’s largest heart eyes for him and he’s finally actually back and you aren’t leaving? You should, I dunno, _tell him how you feel maybe?_ ”

For one long, sharp moment, all the sound falls away. All Keith can see is the way Shiro is laughing at something Lance has said, Krolia looking triumphant beside them with not one or two but _three_ knives in hand. It’s picturesque, the way the dust turns gold in the sunlight around Shiro, the way his happiness makes his skin flush, how relaxed he looks even in a backwater trade planet like this one.

“ _That’s_ what I’m talking about.”

And then Keith blinks and it’s gone, and Pidge’s eyebrow is all the way up in her hair when he looks down at her.

“And what if I already did, and he turned away?”

\--

She doesn’t have anything to say to that, for which Keith is greatful, although she gets a contemplative look on her face that he’s not sure he’s ready for. When they do finally leave the bazaar she doesn’t say anything about Shiro cycling back to Green, but her eyes, when they meet Keith’s during their be-safe-farewells, are speculative and knowing.

\--

He’s too keyed into their routine _not_ to notice the byplay that gets him and Shiro standing together in crowds after that initial supply run. He doesn’t let it get to him, doesn’t let Shiro or anyone see how much it relaxes him to have his friend back within arm’s reach after so long.

“Can’t say I ever expected to end up like this,” Shiro says, sitting next to Keith at a booth in a cantina. Pidge and Hunk are, apparently, gambling, although where they got local money is anyone’s guess. Lance and Allura are attempting to gather information at the bar, but if the way Lance is leaning across it is any indication, there’s more imbibing than listening going on.

“On a Star Wars set?”

Shiro snorts his drink, coughing when it catches in his nose. There’s a half-beat where Keith wants to thump him on the back, but his hands stay around his own glass, and he doesn’t look Shiro in the eye. He looks good here, better than he had when he was staying in Black, the stress that he’d carried around his eyes and mouth and in the set of his shoulders gone. It hurts Keith that it took so long to see.

“I mean,” Shiro waves a hand, voice still rough, “here. With them. With you.”

He ignores the twitch in his chest.

“Can’t say anyone thought we’d end up like this.”

Shiro hms, sitting back, and Keith can tell there’s something on his mind. Two years and a different body later, and Shiro always feels the same when he’s about to say something that’s been weighing on him.

_Only one of those is true for him._

“Keith,” he says, and it’s the same voice that told him _I’m going in to space, Keith, I’m going to the stars_ even though they both knew what that could mean.

He looks back over his shoulder at him, outlined in gold from the window, and thinks, _How can you always be shining_ , and Shiro -- he can’t read the look in his eyes, exactly, but this is important, he knows it is.

“Keith, I r-,”

“ _AND WE ARE LEAVING NOW!_ ” Comes Pidge’s yell, and Keith’s head whips around so fast he’s surprised he doesn’t give himself whiplash. Pidge is grabbing Lance by the arm and towing him away from a tall, broad, _tusked_ alien who looks about two seconds away from tearing both of them into tiny pieces. Allura and Hunk are between them, but the alien has about four feet on them and doesn’t have to try to see over their heads.

“Guess that’s our cue,” he says, grinning, and slams back his drink before vaulting over the table. He can hear Shiro’s scramble, his worried ‘Keith, wait!’, but he’s already shoulder to shoulder with Allura, staring down eight beady eyes and cracking his knuckles. Being in disguise means they can’t use their bayards or Keith’s knife, but he’s never needed a weapon to be in a fight.

\--

They escape almost completely unscathed, save Lance, who spends eighteen hours sleeping off a hangover only to wake up as chipper as he’d started. Keith doesn’t let himself think about what Shiro might have said had Pidge not interrupted him.

It could have been anything. Anything at all.

\--

After that it it stops being weird for Keith and Shiro to end up side by side, and Pidge’s obvious machinations dwindle to nothing. Whatever wall had been erected between them shrinks with every trade town and near-mishap that springs up, and Keith does his damnedest to convince himself it’s as it was.

That almost every time they’re alone Shiro doesn’t try to say something that starts with _Keith_ and ends with _Listen, I-_  or _About what happened_ , or _On the platform_ -

That he isn’t secretly grateful for the accidents that seemingly always interrupt him.

That he isn’t hoping that Shiro never finishes whatever he wants to say.

\--

_If he never gets to say it, maybe we can stay this way. Everything will be fine._

It's a lie he doesn't believe.

\--

And then:

Four months into their voyage and they descend on a quiet farming planet. It’s a welcome relief from the bustling crowds and packed market places of their last stops, even if they had offered more than one distraction that prevented Shiro from finishing a conversation Keith doesn’t know if he’ll ever be ready for.

He knows… it’s going to happen. It has to. It’s the final suture in their friendship, and it’s only fair that Shiro be the one to bridge it since it was Keith who forced him into a corner in the first place. In this Shiro _deserves_ control.

He just doesn’t know if he’ll ever be prepared enough.

Keith shakes himself and glides Black down into a valley. The planet itself is a good change, even if the downside of its mostly gently rolling hills means it makes hiding the lions a little more tricky. Keith is still one of the first to step onto the Earth-like grass and take big, bracing breath of what the scans say is oxygen perfect air. It smells sweeter than earth, and the grass is a curious pale orange, but the sparse trees that speckle the gently rolling hills are almost like oak trees and Keith can imagine that they’re home, somewhere, caught in twilight.

“ _Camping trip!_ ” Lance and Pidge yell together, jumping with hands clasped. Comet flashes down the ramp and then snaps into existence mid air before crashing into them, and Keith can’t help the laughter that it startles out of him when they go crashing into the ground.

Maybe this is enough.

\--

The view from their camp is serene, unbroken by any of the small clusters of civilization that they’d passed en route to the valley. A copse of the thready, almost-oak trees breaks the wind for them, turning the air soft against their skin. They don’t light a fire, wary of drawing undue attention, but Pidge rigs up a round, flickering lamp that puts off enough heat to take the slight chill out of the air, a comfort while they eat.

Keith doesn’t end up next to Shiro for once, but he doesn’t doubt that Pidge had some hand in getting them directly across from one another. He has Coran to one side and Allura on the other, while Shiro is bracketed by Hunk and Krolia. The conversation ebbs and flows while they eat, laughter cropping up in fits and starts until it comes freely, like the group is releasing all their tension into the quiet night, and Keith finds he doesn’t mind much that every time he looks up it’s at Shiro’s face, his eyes, with a feeling of some kind of longing lurking between them.

His chest aches, and he rubs his fist against his sternum before tearing himself away from Shiro’s gaze and re-engaging Coran about some dice game.

\--

Keith puts his hand against the most windward tree of the grove, the bark strangely smooth against his skin. The wood looks braided, like dozens and dozens of cords wound together, maze-like and mesmerizing. He follows the weave as long as he can, up and up and up into the violet and grey canopy above, until the color of the leaves merges with the color of the sky.

It’s soothing, settling. The ache in his chest dims a little with the solitude of it, even though the group’s scattered conversation is only a few feet behind him. He presses his back against the tree and slides down, elbows resting on his knees when he settles on the grass.

His gaze drifts across the valley, the sunset, the atmosphere turning crimson and plum the farther the sun drops. There are distant animal sounds, maybe birds, maybe something else, but it’s enough that he can relax, let the memory of Earth draw over his eyes.

_What will have changed since we’ve been gone?_

“It’s beautiful here,” comes Shiro’s voice from his right. When Keith looks up Shiro is staring out across the hills too, attention in the middle distance. The fading tangerine light makes him look softer, dreamlike. He looks down at Keith and smiles, and the thought pulls itself back up to the front of his mind.  

_What could be more important than him?_

_I love him_.

“Can I?” Shiro asks, nodding at the ground by Keith, who shrugs, grinning.

“Don’t see why not. It’s free realestate.”

Shiro laughs, sinking down beside him, and the silence that settles between them -- it’s nice. There’s a part of Keith, the part that tracks the movements of the team through the camp, who knows how fast it takes to draw and throw his knife, that knows _this is it_. All those missed moments, most of which he’s pretty sure Pidge bombed on purpose, all those false starts?

They all led here. 

The rest of him is, if not ready, at least braced. Worse case scenario they act like nothing ever happened, and it’ll be awkward again, but probably not as bad as it was in the beginning, and eventually they’ll fall back into being friends. Hell, they might even be able to joke about it, somewhere in the future. Keith will say _hey, remember that time I was gone for two years and I came back and thought I was in love with you? Crazy, huh?_ Even if the feelings never fade, he’ll only get better at hiding them with time. And Shiro will probably laugh a little, not meanly, and scrub the back of his neck and say _\--_

“I love you too, you know.”

Keith’s heart stutters. He can feel the blood drain from his face, and he knows, somewhere between the scenario in his head and the reality in front of him, that he can’t hide the shock on his face when he meets Shiro’s eyes.

Shiro looks determined, intense. Keith’s mouth is too dry.

“I’ve been trying to tell you for a while,” he says, eyes flickering over Keith’s face before looking away. “I didn’t - I was scared, at first. Having nightmares.” _Reliving memories,_ Keith thinks, and grabs a fistful of grass where Shiro can’t see. “I’d see your face, how scared you were, how close I came to --”

He cuts himself off, breath harsh between his teeth. Keith can’t move.

When Shiro looks back at him all his softness is gone. The deepening twilight casts him in pale blue, the light from their false-fire making the shadows on his face longer. “I didn’t want to see you like that. I couldn’t handle that I’d done that to you.”

He reaches up, fingers barely ghosting across the scar on Keith’s cheek. His eyes are haunting, haunted, and his fingers shake against Keith’s skin.

“I could have killed you. I almost did.”

Shiro’s fingers press more firmly against the discoloration, and Keith knows what he’s feeling -- the way the tight, smooth skin flexes under pressure, the lack of fine hair. He hesitates, caught between the intensity of Shiro’s eyes and his own aching heart. The despair edging across Shiro’s face galvanized him, and he reaches up to press Shiro’s palm against his jaw.  

“You didn’t. And I meant it, even then.”

Shiro doesn’t say anything, and it takes several moments to draw his attention back to Keith’s eyes.

Time slows down then, drawn tight between their heartbeats. They lean as one, eyes open, and when Shiro’s lips meet his it’s not lightning, or fireworks, or an earth shattering change in his person. Something just… clicks.

It’s right. Perfect.

Shiro smells clean and warm, his mouth moves slowly against Keith’s, the edge of his teeth teasing Keith’s bottom lip, but it’s a brief idea, gone as quiet as the night around them.

They part on shared breath, foreheads resting together. He's is caught by the warmth in Shiro’s eyes, the way his mouth hitches up in a sweet smile. The sadness has dimmed, subsumed by cautious wonder, and Keith’s heart aches for a new reason, one he doesn’t have to hide.

_I love you,_  Shiro mouths, and Keith closes his eyes and breathes.  


End file.
